HiMy son is 13 and just starting out. Has anyone put together a simple guide on how to build a really simple tune with ableton and the launchpad? (he has the mini and 9 live lite). He can get so far, ie has a decent ish beat going and then has no idea where to take it. If anyone has any tips or step by step tutorials to get him going and learning how to mix the sounds togehter including identifying what works well, it would be appreciated

Youtube would be the best bet, just searching for Ableton, Launchpad and Beatmaking Tutorial but without sitting there myself and reviewing each video I find I cannot recommend anything specific.

Making a beat or a loop is fun, quick and probably one of the most easiest things to get started with. One reason people have so much fun with Live is it is great to get ideas and sketches down quickly. The harder part that takes time, effort and to some extent skill, is to take the idea and make something out of it. When I first started trying to master all of this at age 15 using a DOS based text DAW Fasttracker II, I started by creating a very simple tune I already knew how to play using different samples. My first song was simply "mary had a little lamb" but with a beat which was 3 minutes of pure noise and rubbish but it was enough for me to experiment with sequencing something and after that I started copying other songs beats and tunes. An easy way to get going is to just copy what has already been done. Throw out any expectation of making something good and just play and create something. Each minute builds skills.

It's that old saying "you get out what you put in", luckily there are endless tutorials and forums to trawl through where I had to actually find people doing similar things to me and ask questions tho there was a lot less (like youtube) to get distracted with and I could literally spend entire weekends just plugging away and experimenting.